english-education

Experiential Learning has been described as an innovative approach to pedagogy in the fields of literature, language, and composition. Proponents argue that integrating Experiential Learning opportunities such as public projects, the production of publications, partnerships with local organizations, volunteering, and field trips into the curriculum enable students to connect what they've learned in the classroom to the wider world. But the significance of the concept of experience in the scholarship on experiential learning, although far from self-evident, remains largely untheorized. In Songs of Experience, Martin Jay points out that in modern philosophy the concept of experience has taken on a range of meanings, sometimes to conflicting ends.

NeMLA 2019 Roundtable: Mindfulness in the Writing and Literature Classroom

This roundtable session will discuss practical strategies for implementing techniques of mindfulness in the writing and literature classroom, and it will consider the advantages and disadvantages of such techniques.

The practice of peer assessment encompasses various strategies ranging from peer review, peer editing, peer evaluation, peer tutoring, and peer critique, among others. With so many labels and definitions, it is no wonder the use of peer assessment techniques remains erratic and poorly defined. Continued widespread uncertainty over how students should provide feedback during the assessment phase of the writing process has resulted in the need for further analysis. Little has been done to standardize the way in which peer assessment is implemented. It remains necessary to identify the nature of the content of student feedback, the kind of assistance teachers can provide, and how students might better support one another.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to education that emphasizes inclusivity in the design of curricula, instructional strategies, and assessment. Inspired by a movement in architecture to create accessible built environments, the UDL framework is intended to foster learning environments that provide welcoming spaces for learners of all types, according to the premise that structural “accommodations” intended to benefit particular students (closed captioning on videos, digital copies of print documents, alternative assessments, etc.) enhance the learning environment for all students. Increasingly, the UDL model is influencing public policy and the pedagogical climate of educational institutions from elementary schools to colleges.

The economic realities facing today’s undergraduate population have led to a proliferation of enrollments into PhD programs. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of these neophyte graduate students are waiting for jobs that are either no longer available or never existed in the first place. Concurrently, for right or wrong, in US colleges and universities at all levels, adjunct and contingent faculty members are no longer in the minority. These part-time and non-tenure track (NTT) instructors outnumber their tenured and tenure-track counterparts at many two-year and four-year institutions.

This roundtable will provide a forum for discussants to describe, analyze, and critique their experiences of teaching writing at specialized institutions. “Specialized institutions” will be interpreted broadly as an institution of higher education that is neither a traditional liberal arts college nor a regional, public university, but instead one that offers a narrower focus through its curriculum. For instance, federal service academies (i.e., West Point or Annapolis), technical colleges (i.e., Georgia Tech, MIT, or Cal Poly), or professional schools (i.e., Bentley University or FIT).

This panel seeks papers that explore pedagogical strategies for teaching the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe and his contemporaries. With the looming, true-to-life violence bombarding us every day in the news and in other media outlets, the macabre tales of our favorite authors resonate too well. Teaching the violent and psychologically disturbing short stories of Poe, and others writing in this genre, can be challenging in the current climate of violence in America. Exploring the depths and darkness of humanity through literature can be traumatic for contemporary students who are bombarded with violent words and images every day through social media and news outlets.

The Postgraduate English Journal, Durham University’s Online peer-reviewed literary journal, is one of the longest-running online postgraduate literary journals in the UK. In recent years the journal has received reprint requests from academic publishers.

Early-career researchers/academics and postgraduates are invited to submit papers of 5,000–7,000 words (or book reviews of no more than 2,000 words) by Friday, August 31, 2018 for the journal’s 37th edition.